Sundries & Curiosities for the Adventurous. A Tribal Inquiry.

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the gathering time

We construct the experience of time in our minds, so it follows that we are able to change the elements we find troubling — whether it’s trying to stop the years racing past, or speeding up time when we’re stuck in a queue, trying to live more in the present, or working out how long ago we last saw our old friends. Time can be a friend, but it can also be an enemy. The trick is to harness it, whether at home, at work, or even in social policy, and to work in line with our conception of time. Time perception matters because it is the experience of time that roots us in our mental reality. Time is not only at the heart of the way we organize life, but the way we experience it…..Claudia Hammond

oh how fascinating is that spacious quality in between knowing and not-knowing, between the heart and love, between truth and what-we-think-is-true…..may we step lightly into consequence from integrity…..

We do what people who search and seek have been doing for thousands of years: we find new ways to live. We awaken from the numbness; we challenge the status quo. We do it right in our little corners of the world.

It is not even a question of awareness, of posting one more insightful commentary, of sharing one more petition. These things are, of course, good and necessary, but they are never enough.

The heart wants action, to be embodied in daily small kindnesses.

There is an ancient wisdom story from the desert fathers: “Do not feed the heart what does not nourish the heart.”

We need to stop feeding the consumer machine, which tells us our worth by the newest gadget we have purchased, only to throw the last one in an ever-growing landfill. We need to stop perpetuating the cycles of violence by denouncing war but still letting our minds offer relentless judgments about the people we encounter every day.

We go off to our metaphorical deserts and wildernesses to really reevaluate our priorities.

The heart sees how it is all connected.

We nourish ourselves by finding others who also want to live on the wild edges of the empire—the dominant consciousness—and imagine something different together. This tribe includes kindred souls, maybe even just one or two, along with our spiritual ancestors, the desert mothers and fathers, the mystics and monks who said there is a better way.

We need to feed the heart with silence.

We don’t come to understand the great suffering of the world by thinking our way through it. Discussion is good, and conversations and reflection are worthy. And yet, what nourishes the heart most are the moments of radical humility when we step beyond words and into the space between. We listen. We tend. We wait.

The heart endures.

Amma Theodora, one of the desert mothers, shares this story:

Let us strive to enter by the narrow gate. Just as the trees, if they have not stood before the winter’s storms cannot bear fruit, so it is with us; this present age is a storm and it is only through many trials and temptations that we can obtain an inheritance in the kingdom of heaven.